Chinese People Say Bo Xilai Deserves Punishment, and Regime Too

Bo Xilai at the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference at the Great Hall of the People on March 3, 2012 in Beijing. While Bo deserves his punishment, the case is a reflection of a deviated system, Chinese commentators say.(Feng Li/Getty Images)

Following the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) announcement that Bo Xilai has been expelled from the Party and passed on to the judiciary system, Chinese netizens vented on microblogs. Many commented along the lines that, while Bo deserves it, his case is a reflection of a deviated political and social system.

For months, Bo Xilai’s name was a forbidden term on Weibo, China’s biggest microblog. Now that the ban is lifted, his name is number two among key word searches, with more than 7.5 million posting results.

Netizen “Four V Old Dad” said: “An undisciplined person who violated the law was investigated by the Party, but not by the legal system. It demonstrates clearly that the Party is above the law. There is still a long way to go for our country to be ruled by law.”

“Anchi Taoist” said: “Bo’s rise to power was not the people’s choice, and his falling from power is also not the people’s choice. The only choice we have is to listen.”

Others questioned why Bo’s other, more serious crimes were not being made public.

“Bo’s got too much on him. Harvesting organs from live people and human specimens [cadaver plastination] have not been mentioned,” said “Watching Sunset2.”

Several Chinese intellectuals also blamed the Communist Party for fostering moral decay.

“Bo Xilai is an evil legacy of the Cultural Revolution; he is the vanguard of the ultra-leftists. So the judgment of him totally satisfies everyone,” Mo Jiangang, a dissident from Guizhou City, told the Sound of Hope (SOH) radio network.

“Although, from one perspective, the trial is just the product of a political struggle,” Mo said. “However, from his moral degeneration, we can clearly see the corruption and evilness of the CCP regime. Corrupt and lecherous high-ranking officials like Bo are everywhere in the CCP.”

Mo said all officials, from high to low, are corrupt and make China chaotic. The CCP’s system is to blame for all of this, and it would be better to bring the CCP to trial rather than Bo, he said.

Hu Xingdou, a well-known China scholar and professor at Beijing Institute of Technology, told Voice of America: “Someone like Bo Xilai coming to such an end seems very unexpected, giving people the feeling of experiencing an earthquake. People are very shocked,” he said.

But such a serious problem is a common phenomenon in China, Hu said, and these things exist because of serious problems with China’s political system.

“That is, the problem is not just limited to Bo personally, but it’s a problem of the entire system,” Hu said.

Human rights lawyer Tang Jitian told SOH that without fundamentally changing the society that created Bo Xilai, there will be other Bo Xilais.

“If one only deals with one individual, but doesn’t change the bad foundation of society to bring society into a normal state, even after Bo is expelled, I’m afraid that there will be others like him,” said Tang.

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Editor’s Note: When Chongqing’s former top cop, Wang Lijun, fled for his life to the U.S. Consulate in Chengdu on Feb. 6, he set in motion a political storm that has not subsided. The battle behind the scenes turns on what stance officials take toward the persecution of Falun Gong. The faction with bloody hands—the officials former CCP head Jiang Zemin promoted in order to carry out the persecution—is seeking to avoid accountability for their crimes and to continue the campaign. Other officials are refusing to participate in the persecution any longer. Events present a clear choice to the officials and citizens of China, as well as people around the world: either support or oppose the persecution of Falun Gong. History will record the choice each person makes.

Click www.ept.ms/ccp-crisis to read about the most recent developments in the ongoing crisis within the Chinese communist regime. In this special topic, we provide readers with the necessary context to understand the situation. Get the RSS feed. Who are the Major Players?